One of Germany’s largest Christian healthcare companies, AGAPLESION manages not only over a hundred medical institutions and more than a million patients, but also a huge amount of data. And to store, document and analyse all that data, the company is highly dependent on a functioning business intelligence (BI) and data warehouse (DWH) system. When it was time to update their existing solution, AGAPLESION decided to go with a modern innovation platform designed for them by TIMETOACT. They implemented the platform together based on IBM Cloud Pak for Data System – powerful, scalable and several times faster than its predecessor. This has opened up far-reaching possibilities for managing and evaluating data, allowing AGAPLESION not only to optimize existing applications, but also to think about completely new analytics requirements, including the integration of AI.
- Maintenance and support contracts for the existing BI and DWH system threatened to expire
- Performance of the solution no longer met AGAPLESION's growing data analytics requirements
- Setup of IBM Cloud Pak for Data System as an innovation platform with all solution components on one system
- Migration of already existing and installation of additional software on new hardware
- Higher performance and lower operating costs
- Better possibilities for documentation and analyses
Modernizing the BI and DWH system is probably AGAPLESION’s biggest project in our technical area so far. We’d already worked very successfully with TIMETOACT colleagues in the past, so it made sense to call on their expertise again for this extensive project.
Jan Geesen Team Lead Business AnalyticsAGAPLESIONA new business intelligence and data warehouse system to support evolving tasks
AGAPLESION’s BI and DWH solution collects data relating to patients, bed occupancy, operating theatre planning, employees and IT tickets, etc. The system must function seamlessly, as the data forms the basis of the healthcare company’s planning, decision-making and balance sheets. The existing system consisted of IBM products, some of which were already past their prime (IBM Netezza, IBM Cognos 10, IBM TM1, Cognos Controller Desktop), plus Talend Data Integration.
System resources were at full capacity, which led to performance problems and made it impossible to run more complex analyses. And with maintenance and support contracts approaching their expiry date, it was time to take action. AGAPLESION’s data analytics needs had grown and developed, so the company called on TIMETOACT to implement a solution that would meet their new requirements. The two companies can now look back at a successful collaboration.
The key requirement of the project was to set up a powerful, scalable BI and DWH solution – ideally with all components in a single system. The new platform needed to combine all the desired applications and functions, such as a data warehouse, software for data integration and planning, plus extensive reporting, analytics and data science options, including the use of AI.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data System as a central location for all solution components
After consulting with TIMETOACT, AGAPLESION opted for a full innovation platform based on IBM Cloud Pak for Data System. The platform includes all necessary hardware components, pre-assembled and optimized for the application, the modern container application platform RedHat OpenShift, plus the IBM software Cloud Pak for Data. Cloud Pak for Data’s modular structure allowed us to begin with the Data Management module, with the Analytics and AI modules due to follow later. The individual modules are:
- IBM Netezza Performance Server (NPS) – successor of Netezza
- IBM Data Stage – IBM’s data integration solution – to replace Talend
- IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog – data catalogue integrated with the platform
- IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson – the current 11.2 version
- IBM Planning Analytics with Watson – successor to the IBM TM1
- IBM SPSS – previously stand-alone, now integrated
- IBM Watson Studio/machine learning – IBM’s modern platform for implementing AI
- Due to the technical platform outside OpenShift, IBM Cognos Controller was also upgraded to a new version.